Teen's joke text to mother leads police to swarm bank

December 20, 2012|By Ashley Rueff | Tribune reporter

(Tribune illustration)

A teenager’s joking text message about two bank robbers who escaped from a South Loop jail escalated into a 911 call prompting authorities to swarm a bank in Orland Park, authorities and bank officials said this afternoon.

Orland Park police Cmdr. John Keating said a woman made a 911 call to police at 12:14 p.m. Tuesday to report a bank robbery at the Marquette Bank at 7560 W. 159th St. after she interpreted from a text message sent by her daughter that the bank was being robbed.

“That turned out not to be the case,” Keating said. “It was totally unfounded.”

But that wasn’t known until after police launched a full response and discovered nothing amiss at the bank.

Jeff MacDonald, marketing director for Marquette, said a 19-year-old customer told her mother via text message that she was going to the bank Tuesday. Her mother responded by telling her daughter to be careful because of the ongoing search for the escaped bank robbers who had been sighted that morning in Tinley Park.

Jokingly, the daughter texted her mother to say, “They’re here, they have guns,” MacDonald said, but her mother didn’t know it was a joke and she called 911.

Keating characterized the text message as a miscommunication between a mother and daughter with no direct association with the bank and said police are investigating the incident to determine if there was any criminal intent.

“Any time there’s a 911 call, we have to determine if false information was provided,” he said.

When the 911 call was made, Orland Park police were assisting other law enforcement agencies in searching for Joseph “Jose” Banks and Kenneth Conley who escaped from Metropolitan Correctional Center in the South Loop and reportedly took a cab to Tinley Park where they were spotted Tuesday morning.

Keating said while officers were conscious of the escapees, it didn’t affect their response to what they believed was a bank robbery.

“I think we take every 911 call seriously, and we respond as we would if we had no fugitives that were still outstanding,” he said.

MacDonald said business at the bank was only disrupted briefly and that he quickly distributed information to all of its bank employees alerting them about the incident and explaining that there was no need to be alarmed.

“It was a good practice of crises communication within the bank,” he said. “We’re just happy that everybody was safe.”